Help Remove BRIBERY FROM THE CENTER OF CALIFORNIA POLITICS |
Home The Website Corruption Updates The Database The Archives Link Clusters Why How to Help Contact |
Fight Corporate Media Liars |
CORRUPTION UPDATES 139 Posted: December 19, 2007, Draft edition Previous Page: Page 138 All Archives Next page: Page 140 Contact Us: Committeefordemocracy.org 1) The Articles linked below were Abstracted from the sources cited. After the abstract there's analysis and commentary, links to related articles, and a link to the database with suggested search terms. Mukasey rejects Congress' demands for info about destroyed tapes From the Associated Press
LAT, December 14, 2007
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused today to give Congress details of the government's investigation into interrogations of terror suspects that were videotaped and destroyed by the CIA. He said doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry is vulnerable to political pressure. In letters to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees that oversee the Justice Department, Mukasey said there is no need right now to appoint a special prosecutor to lead the investigation. The preliminary inquiry currently is being handled by the Justice Department and the CIA's inspector general. Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike angrily denounced Mukasey's refusal, which they said blocks congressional oversight of the Justice Department. Additionally, lawmakers from both parties accused the Justice Department of obstructing a House Intelligence Committee inquiry by advising the CIA against cooperating with it. "Earlier today, our staff was notified that the Department of Justice has advised CIA not cooperate with our investigation," House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and the panel's top Republican, Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, said in a joint statement today. "We are stunned that the Justice Department would move to block our investigation," Reyes and Hoekstra said. "Parallel investigations occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the Attorney General can stand in the way of our work. ... It's clear that there's more to this story than we have been told, and it is unfortunate that we are being prevented from learning the facts. The executive branch can't be trusted to oversee itself." The videotapes, made in 2002, showed the CIA's interrogations of two terror suspects. They were made to document how CIA officers used new, harsh questioning techniques approved by the White House to force recalcitrant prisoners to talk. The CIA destroyed the tapes in 2005 but acknowledged doing so only last week. The disclosure brought immediate condemnation from Capitol Hill and from a human rights group which charged the spy agency's action amounted to criminal destruction of evidence. Intelligence officials have said the methods that were shown on the videotapes included waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that causes the sensation of drowning and is banned by the Pentagon. The issue of waterboarding threatened to derail Senate approval of Mukasey last month. During his confirmation hearings in October, Mukasey promised senators he would review Justice Department memos after becoming attorney general to determine whether waterboarding amounts to torture -- which would deem it illegal. Earlier this week, however, Mukasey said he has not yet finished that review, and rebuffed calls from Congress to make a speedy decision. Judge Orders Hearing on CIA Videos By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 8:40 PM PST, December 18, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The administration must answer questions about the destruction of CIA interrogation videos of two al-Qaida suspects, a federal judge said Tuesday, rejecting the government's efforts to keep the courts out of the investigation. U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy ordered Justice Department lawyers to appear before him Friday at 11 a.m. to discuss whether destroying the tapes, which showed two al-Qaida suspects being questioned, violated a court order. The Justice Department has urged Congress and the courts to back off, saying its investigators need time to complete their inquiry. Government attorneys say the courts don't have the authority to get involved in the matter and could jeopardize the case. For now, at least, Kennedy disagreed. Attorneys in unrelated cases, meanwhile, began pressing other judges to demand information about the tapes. In June 2005, Kennedy ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay." Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Justice Department argued that the videos weren't covered by the order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Kennedy did not say why he was ordering the hearing or what he planned to ask. Even if the judge accepts the argument that the government did not violate his order, he still could raise questions about obstruction or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation." Also Tuesday, lawyers for a man convicted of terrorism charges alongside Jose Padilla asked a federal judge in Miami to force the government to turn over any remaining evidence regarding Zubaydah's interrogation. Prosecutors have acknowledged that Zubaydah provided information identifying Padilla as an al-Qaida operative working on a purported "dirty bomb" plot, leading to his May 2002 arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Lawyer Ken Swartz said information about his client, convicted terrorism supporter Adham Amin Hassoun, might be found in those interrogations. In a third case, this one involving another Guantanamo Bay detainee, attorney Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice asked U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington to schedule a hearing. Kessler's order, filed in July 2005, is almost identical to Kennedy's, and Hafetz says he worries key evidence was destroyed. The Justice Department had no comment on Kennedy's decision to hold a hearing. Its lawyers are working with the CIA to investigate the destruction of the tapes and urged Kennedy to give them space and time to let them investigate. Remes had urged Kennedy not to comply. "Plainly the government wants only foxes guarding this henhouse," Remes wrote in court documents this week. The Bush administration has taken a similar strategy in its dealings with Congress on the issue. Last week, the Justice Department urged lawmakers to hold off on questioning witnesses and demanding documents because that evidence is part of a joint CIA-Justice Department investigation.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey also refused to give Congress details of the government's investigation into the matter Friday, saying doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry was vulnerable to political pressure.
Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A.Tapes By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE NYT, December 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/washington/19intel.html?_r=1&oref= slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
WASHINGTON — At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials. The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged. Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel. One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Mr. Rodriguez received legal guidance from two C.I.A. lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger. The officials said that those lawyers gave written guidance to Mr. Rodriguez that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that the destruction would violate no laws. Robert S. Bennett, a lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez, insisted that his client had done nothing wrong and suggested that Mr. Rodriguez had been authorized to order the destruction of the tapes. “He had a green light to destroy them,” Mr. Bennett said. Besides the Justice Department inquiry, the Congressional intelligence committees have begun investigations into the destruction of the tapes, and are looking into the role that officials at the White House and Justice Department might have played in discussions about them. The C.I.A. never provided the tapes to federal prosecutors or to the Sept. 11 commission, and some lawmakers have suggested that their destruction may have amounted to obstruction of justice. Jonathan Hafetz, who represents a Qatari prisoner at Guantánamo and filed a motion on Tuesday seeking a separate hearing, said the videotapes could well be relevant. “If the government is relying on the statement of a witness under harsh interrogation, a videotape of the interrogation would be very relevant,” said Mr. Hafetz, of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school. In addition to the Guantánamo court filings, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal judge to hold the C.I.A. in contempt of court for destroying the tapes. The A.C.L.U. says the destruction violated orders in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by several advocacy groups seeking materials related to detention and interrogation.
No Surprize Here Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., December, 2007 The dem congress just reccomended and confirmed another AG, who all but promised to follow exactly the same path. Congress Sells Out: House Approves Wiretap Measure, WP, 8-5-07 Bush could bypass new torture ban, globe, 1-4-06 Liars in Congress to ban torture: They already did, and bush ignored them, NYT, December 7, 2007 Presidential Crime: Bush signs new CIA Torture authorization, LAT, July 21, 2007 ABA Clear: Bush Policy allows Torture, AP, 8-10-07 Rights Groups Call for End to Secret Detentions, NYT, June 7, 2007 Book: Torture Taxi reveals us system of kidnapping, secret prisons, and torture, Toward Freedom, 9-6-07 The New AG: Mukasey Endorses Expansive Presidential Authority: Defends all of bush's crimes, wp, 10-18-07 Mukasey's reply draws more fire, declines to call water-boarding torture, LAT, 10-31-07 On torture: Psycologists built, run, torture facilities, Vanity Fair , 7-17-07 Waterboarding is torture, wp, 11-1-07
Some Thoughts on torture and how our new AG was "selected:" Gonzales Quits: Who Will Defend the President's Crimes Now? August 28, 2007 Mukasey Affirms He Will Defend and Advance the President's Career as a Criminal, Oct 18, 2007 1984 in America: Torture as a tool of State, 10-31-07 Who Will Defend the President's Crimes Now? Finding a New Attorney General to replace Gonzales, 8-28-07
Much more information on Torture: Links
Search the Corruption Database under Torture Speak your Mind here! Send your Comments about the Topic Above for Posting! Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)
2) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited. Picture of Secret Detentions Emerges in Pakistan By CARLOTTA GALL NYT, December 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/world/asia/19disappeared.html?ref=todayspaper
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies, apparently trying to avoid acknowledging an elaborate secret detention system, have quietly set free nearly 100 men suspected of links to terrorism, few of whom were charged, human rights groups and lawyers here say. Those released, they say, are some of the nearly 500 Pakistanis presumed to have disappeared into the hands of the Pakistani intelligence agencies cooperating with Washington’s fight against terrorism since 2001. No official reason has been given for the releases, but as pressure has mounted to bring the cases into the courts, the government has decided to jettison some suspects and spare itself the embarrassment of having to reveal that people have been held on flimsy evidence in the secret system, its opponents say. In one case, a suspect tied to, but not charged with the 2002 killing of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist, was dumped on a garbage heap, so thin and ill he died 20 days later. He, like one other detainee, was arrested in South Africa several years ago and released in Pakistan this year. In at least two instances, detainees were handed over to the United States without any legal extradition proceedings, Pakistani lawyers and human rights groups say. American officials here and in Washington refused to comment on the cases. In addition, human rights groups and lawyers here contend, the government has swept up at least 4,000 other Pakistanis, most of them Baluchi and Sindhi nationalists seeking ethnic or regional autonomy who have nothing to do with the United States campaign against terrorism. Human rights groups and lawyers describe the disappearances as one of the grimmest aspects of Pervez Musharraf’s presidency, and one that shows no sign of slowing. The issue of the missing became one of the most contentious between President Musharraf and the Supreme Court under its former chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The releases are particularly galling to lawyers here because as one justification for imposing emergency rule on Nov. 3, President Musharraf accused the courts of freeing terrorism suspects. That decree was lifted Saturday, but the former chief justice and other judges were dismissed and remain in detention. The Supreme Court hearings on the missing have been halted. Detainees have been warned on their release not to speak to anyone about their detention, yet fragments of their experiences have filtered out through relatives and their lawyers. A few even appeared in court and told their stories, and it became increasingly clear that the “disappeared” men had in fact been held in military or intelligence agency cells around the country, often for several years without being charged. In some cases, detainees recounted that they had been interrogated in the presence of English-speaking foreigners, who human rights officials and lawyers suspect are Americans. A United States Embassy spokeswoman said she could not comment on the allegations and referred all questions to Washington. A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, Mark Mansfield, declined to comment on Mr. Rehman’s accusations, or on any specific detainees. One detainee, a Jordanian named Marwan Ibrahim, who was arrested in a raid in the city of Lahore, where he had been living for 10 years, said he was sent to a detention center in Afghanistan run by Americans, then to Jordan and Israel, and was finally released in Gaza, according to an account Mr. Ibrahim gave to Human Rights Watch. Another detainee, Majid Khan, 27, a Pakistani computer engineer who disappeared from Karachi four years ago, surfaced April 15 this year before a military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay. His American lawyers say he was subjected to torture in C.I.A. detention in a secret location. Mr. Mansfield, the C.I.A. spokesman, declined to comment, except to say that the “C.I.A.’s terrorist interrogation effort has always been small, carefully run, lawful, and highly productive.” “Fewer than 100 hardened terrorists have gone through the program since it began in 2002,” he added, “and, of those, less than a third required any enhanced interrogation measures.” As more and more such accounts have come to light, President Musharraf has fought vigorously to keep the details of Pakistan’s secret detentions hidden. Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., December 21, 2007 This "party line" justification is lacking in three aspects. First, torture is not warranted nor legal if there is a "ticking time bomb," a pending terrorist or military attack, or any other imminent or pending threat. Torture is a war crime, and a crime against humanity, in all cases under all circumstances. Second, the "party line" justification of the extreme form of torture that waterboarding represents ignores the many steps of torture that preceed waterboarding, and have become a common feature in america's programs of secret and illegal detentions. The steps of torture preceeding waterboarding utilize technics of long term psychological and physical tortures that include freezing, pain-position bondage, isolation, auditory overloading, slapping, punching, shaking, animals, sexual abuse, and god know what else they are doing. What is sure, is that our secret detention prisons and those of our "allies," are designed to create conditions of existance that are tantamount to torture. Finally, the system of kidnapping known in the corporate press as "extrodinary rendition" demonstrates that number of people the CIA admits to torturing itself are mearly a fraction of the number of people who the CIA caused to be tortured while CIA agents "observed." Bush's support for domestic secret police state powers in america opens the door to every dictator in the world to employ the same tools against their own people with impunity. Our government's use of power establishes a baseline for governments around the world. Our government's justification and use of criminal powers gives a green light for these illegal powes to be used with impunity by american-supported dictatorships to maintain their criminal regimes with our blessings. The article above demonstrates exactly how bush's disregard for the law has done tremendous damage to both human and democratic rights in Pakistan. The US is willing to allow our allies to ignore international laws against illegal war, war crimes, torture, and domestic political rights if they contribute to maintaining america's security and control of global resources and markets. Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, and Ethiopia are recent examples among many. The "party line" excuse of, and justifications for torture do not stand on their face, and upon closer examanation prove to be odious distractions from the chain of crimes and tortures that preceed waterboarding. Like the Iraq war itself, the press, parties, and this administration are trying to mislead the public into accepting torture as a tool of state. US Support keeps Dictator Musharraf in power, Al-Ahram, 1-07 American Dictator Removes Chief Justice in Pakistan, bbc, 3-12-07 Pakistan Police report arrest in '07 that really happened, in secret, in '03, CBC, 6-5-07 Bush sure Musharraf will take "swift actions" against terror, wp, 8-10-07
AMERICAN DEATH SQUADS STILL HAUNT GUATEMALA, NYT, March 5, 2007 Mexico to boost tapping of phones and e-mail with U.S. aid, LAT, May 25, 2007 Guatemala: Deal With U.S. for $2.3 Million to Fight Drugs, AP, Sept 21, 2007 US Funding helps China Catch up with the West: It's 1984 in China, NY Times, August 12, 2007 UNITED FRUIT NEVER STOPPED SUPPORTING DICTATORS WHO KEEP PEASANTS WORKING, NYT, March 19, 2007 CIA rejects secret jails report, bbc, 8 June 2007 CIA dissenters aided secret prisons report, Reuters, 7-17-07 US organizing mass kidnappings in Kenya and Somalia, Reprieve, March 22, 2007 Sabra and Shatila Massacres, 25 years later, Palestine Times, Oct 10, 2007 ABC Promotes Torture, ABC, 12-10-07 Egypt hides torture behind fight against "Terror," BBC NEWS, 12-11-07
Argentina 'dirty war' sentences, BBC, 19 December 2007 Kissinger approved Argentinian 'dirty war', Guardian, 12-6-03 National Security Archive, State dept. reports on Kissenger’s knowledge of “Dirty War.” National Security Archive, State dept. reports on weakness of insurgency. Unearthing War’s Horrors Years Later in South Korea, NYT, December 3, 2007 Torture Links Search the Corruption Database under Torture
Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)
3) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited. Argentina 'dirty war' sentences A court in Argentina has sentenced eight former officials to jail terms of 20 to 25 years for abuses during the country's military dictatorship. BBC, Wednesday, 19 December 2007, 05:43 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/7151202.stm
Among those sentenced was the former head of the army, Cristino Nicolaides. He is the highest ranking official to be convicted since an amnesty law was repealed in 2003. The officials were charged with killing members of a left-wing guerrilla group during Argentina's "dirty war" in the 1970s and 1980s. Six other former army officers and an ex-police officer were sentenced along with Nicolaides. Up to 30,000 people are believed to have been kidnapped, tortured or killed during under Argentina's military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. Lawyers said Nicolaides, 80, could not attend the sentencing because of ill health, but the other defendants were present. One defendant told the judge he was innocent, saying the military regime had brought "order, not repression" to Argentina. Some spectators shouted insults at the men before they were led from the court. What's Really Going on Here?Kissinger and all American Participants in South American Crimes against Humanity during "Operation Condor" Must be Charged and Tried for their crimes Kissinger approved Argentinian 'dirty war', Guardian, 12-6-03 National Security Archive, State dept. reports on Kissenger’s knowledge of “Dirty War.” National Security Archive, State dept. reports on weakness of insurgency. Wiki: Dirty War
Search the Corruption Database under
Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)
4) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited. Unearthing War’s Horrors Years Later in South Korea By CHOE SANG-HUN NYT, December 3, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/asia/03korea.html SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 2 — Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, Kim Man-sik, a military police sergeant, received an urgent radio message from the South Korean Army’s Counterintelligence Corps: Go to local police stations, take custody of scores of Communist suspects held there and execute them. Mr. Kim complied. What he did and saw in those days is etched permanently in his mind. Unlike the situation in South Africa, where the truth commission started work soon after the collapse of the apartheid government, South Korea’s commission was not created for decades. During most of that time, the country was ruled by anti-Communist authoritarian governments that wanted to keep buried the history of violence against people who had been accused of being Communists. The cases include 215 episodes in which survivors say American warplanes and ground troops killed unarmed civilians. After being repeatedly ignored by previous governments, Mr. Ja and other victims’ relatives were rewarded last month when the commission finally ruled the killings unlawful. But any move to enact a special law to prosecute these atrocities is likely to set off protests by Korean conservatives. (The law would be needed because the statute of limitations has run out.) “Many of those human butchers and their children are now rich and powerful,” Mr. Ja, 65, said. “What am I going to say when I die and meet my father in the heaven and he asks, ‘My son, what have you done to restore my honor?’” Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., December, 2007 Search the Corruption Database under
Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)
5) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited. Britain: Terror Detention Plan Draws Fire By AP Published: December 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/world/europe/07briefs-detention.html?ref=todayspaper
The government again sought the power to jail terrorism suspects without charge for up to 42 days, and the proposal brought immediate pledges of defeat from opposition parties and outrage from civil rights groups. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, left, said the existing 28-day limit did not give the authorities enough time to investigate terrorism cases, which can involve unraveling false identities, tracking evidence in multiple languages and deciphering links to international terrorist networks. She also said, “There is a serious and sustained threat from terrorism.” The proposed new limits must go through Parliament.
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., December, 2007
Search the Corruption Database under
Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)
6) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited. Court upholds CIA's power to keep president's daily briefing secretSF Chron, September 5, 2007 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/05/BAA7RV13T.DTL The CIA's top-secret daily briefings for the president on intelligence information must remain secret, even 40 years later, if the agency reasonably concludes that disclosure would compromise national security, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a UC Davis political science professor and historian was not entitled to any portion of the CIA's briefings to President Lyndon Johnson for two days during the Vietnam War, Aug. 6, 1965, and April 2, 1968. A lawyer for the professor said those dates were important for his research on the war. The CIA has briefed presidents daily since the Kennedy administration. The briefings gained new prominence four years ago during a commission's inquiry into the Sept. 11 terror attacks, when President Bush disclosed that the CIA had told him in August 2001 that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike within the United States. Of the more than 13,500 briefs in existence, the court said at least 25 have been made public, either accidentally or with the CIA's approval. The UC Davis professor, Larry Berman, argued that those documents showed that historically valuable information could be disclosed safely while sensitive material was blacked out. The CIA countered that the documents were exempted from public-records laws under a statute that orders the national intelligence director to protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure. The appeals court stopped short of an absolute exemption but said CIA records were entitled to "near-blanket" secrecy under federal law. In this case, the court said, the agency's information review officer said every word in the two documents must be withheld because they identified the CIA's sources and methods. "Judges are poorly positioned to evaluate the sufficiency of the CIA's intelligence claims" and must defer to the agency's judgment, Judge Raymond Fisher said in the 3-0 ruling, which upheld a lower court decision. He also cited the CIA's assertion that disclosure of confidential sources, even from 40 years ago, would make it harder for the agency to persuade potential new sources that their identities would be protected. That rationale might become weaker "four or five generations later," but must be accepted now, Fisher said.
A concerted effort to bury every aspect of the exercise of executive branch authority behind a shield of secrecy. The two main problems with secrecy is that it encourages mundame corruption and hides high crimes. Bush has been claiming secrecy privilidges to hide domestic corruption. Abramoff and a whole range of bribers were documented in White House visitor logs, an embarassment which bush has hid by claiming the visitor logs are "secret." The same tatic was employed to hide the fact that our national energy policy was crafted by Ken Lay, Enron, and a small handfull of Big Oil's leaders and Cheney, in secret. Secrecy in government distorts and amplifies the already overpowering influence of special interest bribery in politics by allowing the bribers to make laws which deregulate and subsidize their industries at the cost of our nation's health, wealth, and general welfare. As bad as secrecy is in crafting law and domestic policy, these are merely mundane corruptions that pale in comparison to the using governmental secrecy to cover war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against our domestic civil rights, and crimes against the structure and rules of our govenment as specifically named by our Constitution.
PRESIDENT TRIES END RUN AROUND CONSTITUTION:CLAIMS ACTIONS ARE SECRET, AND ABOVE THE LAW, LAT, January 19, 2007 CIA dissenters aided secret prisons report, Reuters, 7-17-07 Secret Government links
Search the Corruption Database under Secret Government (22 Abstracts)
Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)
7) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited. Psychologists oppose torture yet vote to attend terror interrogationsSF Chron, August 20, 2007 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/20/MN5PRLKVU.DTL After a raucous debate about what role - if any - psychologists should play in U.S. government interrogations of terror suspects, the American Psychological Association voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to reject a measure that would have in effect banned its members from those interrogations. Instead, the association passed a competing measure that reaffirms the organization's position against torture "and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" of terror suspects. For the first time on record, the resolution lists specific treatment that the association opposes, including mock executions, water-boarding, sexual humiliation, induced hypothermia, hooding, using dogs to threaten and intimidate suspects, and sleep deprivation. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, these techniques have been used by U.S. authorities against terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other U.S. prisons to extract information, according to military officials and human rights activists. Sunday's vote by the association's 165-member legislative council took place at the APA's convention in San Francisco. With 148,000 members, the American Psychological Association is the largest body of psychologists in the world.
See these critical articles on the complicity of APA in torture: Rorschach and Awe, Vanity Fair, 7-17-07 Bush and Psychologists Who Abet Torture, harper's 7-07
Search the Corruption Database under Torture
Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)
Previous page: Page 138 Next page: Page 140 Contact Us: Committeefordemocracy.org
Today's Headlines
1) AG Mukasey blocks Congressional inquiry into CIA destruction of Torture evidence 1b) Mukasey asserts Federal Courts have no Jurisdiction over torture evidence presented and witheld from their courts 1c) White House urged torture tape destruction: Is justice investigating its own decisions to support torture? 2) Pakistan Govt releasing kidnap-torture victims captured in bush terror war 3) Argentina 'dirty war' sentences 4) 1950: American puppet S. Korean dictatorship executes thousands 5) Brit Govt seeks 42 day detention without proof 6) CIA briefings a secret forever: assent to impunity, defeat for honesty, history, and accountability 7) American Psychological Association supports Torture
|